Zombie Central
by LeFay Strent
Summary: "Well, let's put it this way…" Mustang started off solemnly and then shouted with wide eyes, "I SAW THE FREAKING FUHRER MISSING HALF HIS HEAD!" -A side story for TBA-


**This story is for xXRedPokerGirlxX for winning my latest contest. She told me a one-shot idea for Ed and Al planning the zombie appocalypse but I put a lot in it so it's gonna be a multi-chapter kinda story, except it's divided into parts. I also added the main character from my story _The Blood Alchemist_, Taylor. You don't need to read TBA to understand this story, just that Taylor is from our side of the gate and has been traveling with Ed and Al, and they know that she's from the other side. Also, this had a mix of both FMA series.**

**A big shout out to Taylor herself for helping me plan this story out! (for those of you who don't know she's my friend in real life) Anyway, enjoy the slightly crackficish maddness!**

* * *

**Part 1:**

**The Panic**

Midday in Central found Taylor strolling down the sidewalk. Edward and Alphonse were currently at Central command center to report to Mustang. Well, they were on their way to report to Mustang anyway when Hughes had intercepted them with an absurdly large collection of family pictures. Needless to say, Taylor had hightailed it out of there and left the poor boys to the man's torture. It would be awhile before they got away from Hughes so Taylor decided to take a walk, being careful not to wander to far from headquarters.

She had been browsing in a shop when she heard a commotion from outside. There was yelling and sounds of a possible fight, making everyone in the shop including Taylor to look away from the merchandise and look out the windows curiously. Taylor narrowed her eyes, seeing two men brawling. However, there seemed something off about one of the men.

Taylor ducked out of the store to get a closer look. Staying on the opposite side of the street, Taylor watched safely from afar as one man was attacking the other. A crowd of people had begun to form and some were even trying to break up the fight, much to the victim's relief. A couple officers entered the fray and demanded to know what was going on.

"He's crazy!" the victim shouted. "He just bit me out of nowhere!" True to his claim, the man was nursing a bleeding shoulder.

A sinking feeling tugged in Taylor's stomach. She glanced over to the man that a couple of helpful pedestrians were valiantly trying to hold back as he thrashed against them. The crazed man said nothing, just moaned unintelligibly. His jaw was slack and around his mouth was a discerning patch of blood. His eyes were glazed with a milky film, holding nothing more than a hungry desire. As he moved about, the neck of his shirt slid down to reveal a dried bite mark crusted with darkened, dried blood and oozing a vile black substance.

A scream filled the air as the crazed man attacked one of his holders, latching onto them by sinking his teeth into the man's neck. Shots were fired, courtesy of the officers when they failed to remove the crazed man by force. The man barely flinched at the bullets and changed his focus onto the officers instead. He bit one of their legs.

Taylor stood frozen in shock as the entire even unfolded. Things became especially gruesome when the man who had his neck bitten out suddenly revived only to viciously drag a woman to the ground to begin feasting on her. There was more screaming, more calls for help, more gun fire, and soon many of the onlookers fled in terror. As someone grabbed Taylor's arm, she woke up from her daze to look over. A man missing an arm held her forearm, bringing it towards his mouth.

Taylor gasped and kicked the guy in his stomach while wrenching her arm away from him. When he stumbled back Taylor ran for it. Heart racing, adrenaline pumping, fear skyrocketing, and eyes wide in terror, Taylor ran for the only place that could possibly be safe: the military command center. She had to get there and find somewhere to hide. What Taylor had only believed to exist in nightmares had somehow come to Central. The zombie apocalypse had begun.

The terrified girl ran past the front gates at top speed, her attention set on first finding a place she would be safe from the flesh eating monsters. Uniformed soldiers gave her odd glances as she ran past them but she was too scared out of her mind to notice. She ran and didn't stop.

* * *

Mustang was chatting with his team for a minute in the outer offices, hoping to prolong going back to paper work. They had just gotten back from lunch and Hawkeye was already giving him a pointed look. She probably would have made some remark too if the pleasant atmosphere of the room wasn't interrupted by a screaming white blur that rushed past all of them and into Mustang's personal office, slamming the door behind it. Mustang blinked and glanced to his office, wondering if what he had just witnessed had been some strange hallucination.

"What the hell was that?" Havoc voiced everyone's question.

"Let's find out," Hawkeye answered, flipping the safety off of her handgun.

With Mustang leading them, all of them approached the office door. With his hand ready to snap, Mustang threw open the door.

"That's…odd," Mustang said as he peered into the room. No one was there, the room being exactly how he had left it.

"They couldn't have just disappeared," Falman said logically.

"Maybe they got out through a window," Breda suggested.

"Spread out and search this room from top to bottom," Mustang ordered sternly. They did so, inspecting every hiding place imaginable. They even opened the windows to look outside and still they found nothing.

Finally, Mustang flopped down into his desk chair. He rubbed the bridge of his nose in annoyance, "I swear, if this is some sort of prank someone is going to get fried."

"It is weird that they got away so fast," Fuery commented, still looking around the room as if they could have missed something. The others nodded in agreement, glancing around in much the same way.

Suddenly, everyone's thoughts were broken by a high pitched hiccup. All eyes looked towards Mustang.

Havoc smirked as he teased, "Aw, I didn't know you had such a cute hiccup Boss."

Mustang's face was utterly serious as he replied carefully, "That wasn't me." As if to prove it another hiccup sounded from around Mustang, though the man himself hadn't so much as moved a muscle.

Slowly, Mustang rolled his chair back and lowered his head to the side to check under his desk: the one place they had neglected to look. He gasped in surprise and stood up, his chair almost toppling backwards.

"Sir?" Hawkeye demanded as her grip on her gun tightened.

In answer, Mustang said in alarm, "There's a girl under my desk."

Hawkeye sighed wearily, "Colonel, what have I told you about bringing strippers into the office?"

Mustang scowled at his lieutenant and would have retorted had a voice not yelled indignantly, "I am _not_ a stripper!"

Fuery, being the most fearful of the group, jumped behind Breda with a squeak, "It talked! The desk is possessed!"

The 'desk' snorted and replied, "I'm not a desk either." A figure appeared as a girl crawled out from under the desk and stood.

"Taylor?" Mustang stared at her questioningly as everyone seemed to visibly relax, Hawkeye even holstering her firearm. "Would you care to explain why you were under my desk?"

Rather than be embarrassed the girl seemed to be scared, "I was hiding."

With that confession, he became more alert. "Hiding from what?" Mustang demanded.

Taylor's arms wrapped around herself as her expression became horrified, "The zombies."

"…you mean a brainless idiot?"

She shook her head, "No! I mean a dead, flesh-eating, gonna-bite-out-your-throat zombies!"

"…"

At their confused, wary stares, Taylor continued, "I saw them when I was walking through the city. There were people turning into zombies! They were eating each other and one tried to _bite_ me! It's here, the zombie apocalypse is here I tell you!"

Mustang sweat dropped, "Taylor, it sounds to me that you've let your imagination get the best of you. Perhaps read to many horror novels lately?"

Her mouth set in a firm frown as she stomped her foot, "I'm not imagining it! I saw zombies and they're gonna eat us all!" Then she dove back under the desk to cower in fear.

No one really knew what to say and so Breda finally asked, "So what are we gonna do?"

Havoc scoffed, "We're not gonna _do_ anything. The kid's obviously overreacting about something."

"I'm not overreacting!" Taylor called from under the desk.

Mustang sighed, "Enough of this nonsense." He reached under the desk and pulled a reluctant ginger out and dragged her out of the offices and into the hall to speak to her alone.

"Look Taylor," he began but she cut him off.

"No, _you_ look Mustang. I'm not kidding around and this isn't some sick joke. I saw real life dead zombies!"

"You realize what you said just contradicted itself, right?"

She growled, "That's besides the point! If we don't do something soon then we're gonna die just like everyone else! We need to come up with a plan to stop this before we become dinner for the undead!"

"Taylor, you…" he trailed off as he registered a strange noise. Taylor heard it to and turned around to looked down the hall from where the noise was coming from. It was a strange sliding sound and then a thud. Like, _shhhhrp, thump!….shhhhrp, thump!_ For the life of him, he couldn't figure out what was making it. "What is that?"

At the end of the hall appeared a man. He stumbled forward, sliding what appeared to be a broken ankle before catching himself with his other leg.

Mustang gasped in recognition, "Fuhrer Bradley?" He took a step in the hurt man's direction, intent on helping him, but Taylor clutched at the sleeve of his jacket. Mustang glanced down to see Taylor staring at Bradley with wide eyes and shaking her head. What had the girl so spooked? There wasn't anything that unsettling about Bradley that he could see, other than the broken ankle.

He looked back up in time to see Bradley turn in their direction. Mustang felt his lunch threatening to make a reappearance at the sight of Bradley missing half of his face. The mutilated man moaned and stumbled in their direction, intent on reaching them.

"Z-z-z-z-_ZOMBIE!_" Taylor screeched.

Mustang did the only practical thing a rational man like himself could think of at that point. He threw Taylor over his shoulder and hauled ass back into the office, slamming and locking the door behind him. Then Mustang's team watched as the two panicked individuals ran around in circles screaming about zombies.

Having had enough, Hawkeye marched over to them and, in one swing, bitch-slapped them both.

"Settled down!" she ordered sternly.

"Yes ma'am!" they immediately obeyed and saluted her.

Hawkeye sighed, already feeling a headache form. "Now, explain yourselves."

Mustang cleared his throat and attempted to take charge of the situation as if he hadn't just had a spaz attack. "It seems we owe Miss Riley an apology because she was indeed correct."

"What do you mean, Boss?" Havoc asked with a raised brow.

"Well, let's put it this way…" he started off solemnly and then shouted with wide eyes, "I SAW THE FREAKING FUHRER MISSING HALF HIS HEAD!"

Taylor nodded frenetically beside him, "_Zombie!_"

"You mean you weren't kidding? There are actually flesh-eating monsters walking around Central?" Fuery squeaked as fear rose within him.

In answer, there was a scratching at the door and the sound of disembodied moans. Nearly everyone jumped out of their skins at the haunting noise.

"Correction, they're walking around Central headquarters. We're doomed!" Taylor cried.

Hawkeye was still on the fence about this whole 'zombie' business so she decided that she would have to see it to believe it. Before Mustang or Taylor could warn against it, Hawkeye opened the door. She stepped back and whipped out her gun, ready just in case.

Everyone gaped at the undead creature that entered the room. It had indeed been Fuhrer Bradley at one time but not anymore. Now it was a mutilated version of him, stumbling in on a broken ankle.

Fuery and Taylor screamed and cowered behind desks while the rest of them took out their firearms (or in Mustang's case, his gloves).

"Stay where you are," Hawkeye ordered the creature in some hope that he could hear her.

"It's not him anymore! He's just a walking corpse now! Shoot him!" Taylor yelled from her spot.

Hawkeye frowned as Bradley stumbled closer. She aimed down and shot his leg. He fell to his knee but got back up. Hawkeye rose the barrel and leveled it with his shoulder this time. The second shot did nothing either.

"The head! Shoot him in the head! It's the only way to kill them!"

"Lieutenant," Mustang said in a worried tone as the zombie came steadily closer to their group.

Hawkeye nodded in understanding, "Right." She aimed for the forehead and met her mark. That did the trick. The corpse fell down to the floor and didn't move again.

Falman was the first of them to move after the incident, taking quick steps to the door in order to close it so no more zombies could freely enter.

"So what are we going to do about this?" he asked.

All eyes went to Mustang. He swallowed nervously, clearly out of his element. He turned and walked over to Taylor, pulling her down into a chair where he could tower over her.

"Now then," he began in a serious tone. "You are going to tell us everything you know about these creatures and how to stop them."

"Me?" she squeaked, pointing at herself.

"Yes, since you are the only one among us who has any knowledge on the matter."

"Okay," she nodded to herself and rubbed her hands in thought. "The thing that Hawkeye just killed was a zombie: a reanimated corpse that has only the desire to feed."

"If it's already dead then how was it walking around?" Breda asked. "I mean, the dead can't just get up and walk again."

"Some kind of human transmutation perhaps?" Mustang suggested.

Taylor shrugged, "It could be some weird, messed up transmutation but from everything I've read or seen it's always some infection. I'm not sure exactly how it works but it makes dead people revive and they spread the infection by biting their victims. If the person isn't eaten to death first and manages to get away then they'll live for a few hours until the infection consumes them and turns them into a zombie."

"I'd really like to wake up now," Fuery moaned. Everyone ignored him though.

"If that's the case then the rate of infection will get out of control," Havoc pointed out. "Especially since no one knows how to handle these things."

"How many of them did you see?" Hawkeye asked Taylor.

"It was only one out on the streets. But he turned someone else and they were attacking even more people. Just that one could turn that whole block into zombies in half an hour…probably less."

"How is it you know about these zombies? Have you fought them before?" Falman asked.

Taylor shook her head frantically, "No. I didn't even think they could _exist_! Where I'm from they're just stories or shows to scare people. I never thought there'd be anything like that here!"

While staring down at the dead body, Hawkeye spoke, "With the Fuhrer dead things are bound to get out of hand. We need to devise a plan of action."

"Alright then," Mustang said and turned to his men. "Fuery, Falman. I want you to alert the other command centers of these creatures and see if there are any sightings of them nearby."

"Sir!" they saluted and went to perform their task.

"Hawkeye, get word out to all the soldiers stationed here. I want this building secure. And Havoc and Breda…do something with that body. It's starting to stink."

Both of the men scowled at their commanding officer but they followed their orders regardless of how…unsanitary it might be.

Mustang went to his own office to use his phone. Taylor followed behind him, not really having anything else to do. Once seated, Mustang dialed Hughes's office.

"Hello!" a cheery voice answered. That told Mustang already that the man had no idea of what was going on.

"Hughes, I want you to listen to me carefully. Contact Dr. Knox and get him here on the double."

Hughes's voice became utterly serious, "Roy, what's this about?"

"I've just discovered that there is a certain…infection being spread through Central. It's turning victims into mindless cannibals."

"…you're not pulling my leg, are you Roy?" he asked in disbelief.

"Afraid not. I just saw one myself. Bradley, in fact. He tried to eat members of my team."

Hughes was silent for a moment. Then he swore softly, "That's one way to open earn a promotion. Are you sure you didn't have anything to do with this infection?"

"_Hughes_!"

"Okay, okay. I'll get Knox over here. But why do you need him?"

"He's a mortician and knows his way around a dead body better than anyone."

"…I'm not even gonna ask," Hughes commented, choosing not to question his friend. "I'll get him in, even if I have to kidnap him."

"And tell him to send Ed and Al here. They should be with him," Taylor whispered to Mustang.

"Send Fullmetal and his brother before you do," Mustang told him.

"Gotchya."

"Oh and Hughes…if you see any dead people walking around try to avoid them…or blow them up." Without waiting for a reply, Mustang hung up.

Leaning back in his chair with a sigh, Mustang ran a hand through his bangs and observed the ginger now staring out the window with a contemplative expression.

"What's on your mind?" he asked the girl.

She glanced at him and turned back to the window before explaining, "Just something that's odd about all of this…I mean, besides the corpses walking around." She frowned and shuddered. "Whether the first victims were infected from a virus or some form of alchemy, I don't know, but I do know that this didn't just come about on it's own."

"Someone's pulling the strings," he realized. "And if we don't find out who it doesn't matter how many of these creatures we eliminate."

Taylor nodded, "They can just release the virus again."

"But that begs the question, just who would start such a hideous plaque?"

* * *

"Looks like everything's going according to plan," Envy smirked as he and Lust stood above the streets of Central, watching the growing chaos.

"Wrath was an unfortunate casualty but it did get things moving along," she commented. Lust recalled how Father had discovered the alchemist Dante and her quest for eternal life. The woman had lived for over four hundred years and needed to jump bodies due to a grotesque side effect. If she remained in a body for too long it would rot. Father found this interesting and had subjected her to a series of experiments, procuring a serum that he learned would create a deadly virus when combined with a homunculus. It began with Wrath and would grow from there.

Envy stretched his arms leisurely, "Well, Gluttony's leading the horde of undead simpletons. What should we do now?"

"We could go on vacation. I hear Creta is lovely this time of year," Lust mused.

"Alright then. Let's head out before things get too messy here." Just as they were leaving Envy paused, "Just one thing though…why are you talking with a British accent?"

Lust blinked blankly at him and replied, "What the bloody hell is British?"

* * *

**IT HAS BEGUUUUUN! It should be interesting how our heroes deal with the growing horde of zombies. Don't know when I'm going to be updating this but I'll try not to wait too long.**


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